By some happy coincidence, at around the same time that Leon Kass recommended
that the President's Bioethics Council read Nathaniel Hawthorne's story
The
Birthmark, in preparation for their deliberations, I also happened
to be rereading Russell Kirk's great book, The
Conservative Mind, in which he too extols the virtues of Hawthorne.
Earth's
Holocaust is one of the stories that Kirk particularly singles out
for its exploration of conservative themes. It's part of Hawthorne's
Mosses
from an Old Manse collection, but it's also available
on-line and well worth a read.

The story concerns a massive bonfire in which the people of the world,
convinced that their modern society has reached a state of near perfection,
determine to burn up all the outdated old knowledge from Man's dark past
:

Once upon a time - but whether in the time past or
time to come, is a matter of little or no moment- this wide world had become
so overburthened with an accumulation of worn-out
trumpery, that the inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a
general
bonfire. The site fixed upon, at the representation
of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other
on the
globe, was one of the broadest prairies of the West,
where no human habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where
a vast assemblage of spectators might commodiously
admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining,
likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire might
reveal some profundity or moral truth, heretofore hidden in mist or darkness,
I made it convenient to journey thither and be present.

As our narrator watches, into the flames go all of literature and art,
the titles and insignias of rank, the decorations and medals bestowed upon
soldiers, the weapons, the fashionable clothing, the liquor and tobacco,
the clerical vestments and the church buildings entire, all the accretions
of Western civilization, until even the Bible is added :

[A]s the final sacrifice of human error, what else
remained to be thrown upon the embers of that awful pile, except the Book,
which, though a celestial revelation to past ages,
was but a voice from a lower sphere, as regarded the present race of man?
It was done! Upon the blazing heap of falsehood
and worn-out truth- things that the earth had never needed, or had ceased
to need,
or had grown childishly weary of- fell the ponderous
church Bible, the great old volume, that had lain so long on the cushion
of the pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice
had given holy utterance on so many a Sabbath day.

And so, purified in the flame, and rid of all of the hoary old thoughts
that had been holding mankind back for so long, the reformers prepare to
face their perfect future. The former executioners, who have cast
into the fire the implements used by the various nations for administering
capital punishment, commiserate about how they will no longer have any
work, now that Man is perfect, but a stranger interrupts their reverie
:

'The best counsel for all of us is,' remarked the
hangman, 'that- as soon as we have finished the last drop of liquor- I
help you,
my three friends, to a comfortable end upon the
nearest tree, and then hang myself on the same bough. This is no world
for us
any longer.'

'Poh, poh, my good fellows!' said a dark-complexioned
personage, who now joined the group- his complexion was indeed
fearfully dark, and his eyes glowed with a redder
light than that of the bonfire- 'Be not so cast down, my dear friends;
you shall see good days yet. There is one thing
that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without
which
all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing
at all; yes- though they had burnt the earth itself to a cinder.'

'And what may that be?' eagerly demanded the last
murderer.

'What but the human heart itself!' said the dark-visaged
stranger, with a portentous grin. 'And unless they hit upon some method
of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will
reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery-the same old shapes, or worse
ones-
which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble
to consume to ashes. I have stood by, this live-long night, and laughed
in my
sleeve at the whole business. Oh, take my word for
it, it will be the old world yet!'

This brief conversation supplied me with a theme
for lengthened thought. How sad a truth- if true it were- that Man's age-long
endeavor for perfection had served only to render
him the mockery of the Evil Principle, from the fatal circumstance of an
error
at the very root of the matter! The heart-the heart-
there was the little yet boundless sphere, wherein existed the original
wrong,
of which the crime and misery of this outward world
were merely types. Purify that inward sphere; and the many shapes of evil
that haunt the outward, and which now seem almost
our only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms, and vanish of their
own
accord. But if we go no deeper than the Intellect,
and strive, with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rectify
what is
wrong, our whole accomplishment will be a dream;
so unsubstantial, that it matters little whether the bonfire, which I have
so
faithfully described, were what we choose to call
a real event, and a flame that would scorch the finger- or only a phosphoric
radiance, and a parable of my own brain!

For good reason does he call this tale a '"parable", for in just a few
pages Hawthorne presents several of the central themes that unify his work,
ideas which form the very core of the conservative critique : that Man's
sinfulness is an immutable part of his character; that rationalists, reformers,
and progressives delude themselves with their utopian notions of the perfectibility
of Man; that in their delusion they do incalculable damage to the culture,
while leaving human nature untouched; and that, no matter the "progress"
they make, evil lurks, waiting to rear its ugly head and shatter their
dreams.